Okay, based on the feedback I got here and on AO3, it looks like I'll be continuing with short chapters. Hope that's alright!

Sometimes Kurt has to remind himself of how good he has it. It's not that he isn't happy and he doesn't enjoy what he has in life, it's more like… He takes it for granted. That's what it is. He lives a comfortable life and he has a good job and a good husband and a beautiful apartment and occasionally they talk about getting a cat because they agreed they're too young for kids yet. By all accounts it is a good life, something that ten years ago he never would have dreamed of having. And yet, sometimes, he finds himself wishing for something more that he can't quite put his finger on.

But then there are moments like this one, and he reminds himself that this? This is good. This is damn near perfect and it's not going to get better than this.

He's lying on the couch with his head in Lucas's lap, eyes closed and he keeps almost drifting off but he doesn't let himself because there's something about this moment that he wants to hold onto. Lucas had been able to come home early today and he had let Kurt force him into the kitchen even though he always claims that he's useless at cooking. And now they were curled up on the couch and there was some documentary on that Lucas had been wanting to watch. Kurt isn't really paying attention but he's happy, Lucas's fingers running through his hair further relaxing him.

Apparently the documentary ends and Lucas shifts, looking down at him. "Hey," he says softly, chuckling.

Kurt blinks a couple of times, looking up at him with a small smile. "Hi," he says back.

"Tired?" Lucas asks him, smiling at him and continuing to gently play with his hair.

(This is how he knows he's maturing: just a few years ago he never would've let anybody else touch his hair, but now this is one of his favorite things.)

"No," he answers and shakes his head.

"No?" Lucas asks, chuckling softly and lightly nudging him to sit up.

Kurt does, sitting up slightly so that his side his pressed up against his husband's. "No," he repeats.

"Really?" Lucas says with a laugh before pressing a quick kiss to his lips. "Because you seem pretty tired."

"No, I'm wide awake," Kurt says with a soft chuckle, stifling a yawn.

"If you say so," he says. "Maybe it's just an aftereffect since you had one of your episodes the other day."

Kurt sobers at that, nodding slowly and getting to his feet. It isn't fun anymore, and even though now he has an explanation for it he can't make himself say what that explanation is. "C'mon," he says softly, reaching out and taking Lucas's hands in his own. "Let's go to bed, okay?"

"Okay," Lucas replies with a small nod, knowing enough to look a bit sheepish at the fact that he'd clearly made a mistake just then.

Kurt leads him back to their bedroom and they go through their routines of getting ready for bed together, dressing down and brushing their teeth.

When they settle down underneath the blankets, Lucas looks at him with a small smile and kisses him slowly. "But… If you're not tired, how about we…?" he trails off but doesn't need to say anything else, his hand running down Kurt's side to his hips saying enough.

Kurt laughs softly and leans up to kiss Lucas, no more words needed. Lucas makes love to him and afterwards he falls asleep curled up in his arms and everything feels perfect.

When he wakes up in the morning alone with Lucas already gone off to work, he stays in bed for a bit longer even though he knows that if Lucas were here he'd playfully chide him for wasting the day away.

Now that Blaine knows what is going on in his head, he has to admit it: he kind of absolutely loves it.

Never feeling alone has always been a source of comfort for him, but now having Kurt there to talk to is a step beyond that and it's amazing. He had been a bit worried for a bit; they hadn't spoken at all since their conversation even though they had talked about speaking the next day. And he knew that it wasn't like Kurt had nothing going on in his life – he wasn't sure what exactly Kurt did, but he was sure that he had a job or something, because, well, he is a real person. But still, a full day of radio silence felt like a bad sign.

But then he woke up the next morning and he made himself breakfast and stepped out onto the patio and sat down only to be greeted by that distinctive voice.

"Are you there?"

Blaine chuckles softly to himself at the way he jumps in surprise at the sudden disturbance to the silence. "Yeah, I'm here," he said softly. "Good morning."

"It's one o'clock in the afternoon," he says back, chuckling.

He has to pause for a moment so that he doesn't say something stupid – his kneejerk reaction is to say something about how Kurt is in the future – and to remind himself that if Kurt is in New York and he is in California, of course there is going to be a time difference. "Well, it's morning for me still," he says instead with a soft laugh.

Blaine pauses for a moment and looks at what Kurt's seeing, blinking to himself in surprise when he seems that Kurt is drawing in a sketchbook.

"But you slept in," comes Kurt's teasing voice, his hand pausing as he chuckles softly at his own words.

"Maybe a bit. It's not even that late," Blaine chuckled, shaking his head. "Anyways, what are you doing there?"

"Oh, um, this?" Kurt asks, looking down at the paper. "I kind of forgot that you'd see that. I work for a designer, I'm just… They're just some sketches." He sounds a little bit embarrassed and Blaine can't help but find that adorable.

"Just some sketches," Blaine echoes, rolling his eyes. "That's not just anything."

"It's work," Kurt says. "So it is."

"Okay, fine, whatever. All I'm saying is, it looks really good," he says.

"Well, thank you, then," Kurt says softly, going back to drawing.

Blaine stays silent for a moment, just watching Kurt's pencil as it moves smoothly over the paper. "I remember this," he says after a bit. "I remember seeing you do this before."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I remember. You were… You couldn't get it right or something, and it was bothering you," he says, thinking back to the moment, one of many that only adds up in hindsight.

"Sounds about right," Kurt replies with a soft laugh. "That's my life, essentially."

"Except for how you're incredibly talented and what you're drawing looks pretty perfect," he says. "Has it happened to you?"

"Has what ever happened to me?" Kurt asks, his voice sounded slightly distracted because of his focus on what he's doing with his hands.

"Anything like, you know, seeing anything I'm doing?"

"Oh," he says, pausing for a moment and thinking about it. "Yeah, a few times, I guess," he said with a small shrug.

"Yeah?"

"I remember… This one time I was in high school, sophomore or junior year, maybe, and I guess you were… I guess you went to the beach or something," he says. "I just remember that it… It felt so real. Like I was actually there."

"That must've been when my brother moved out here. He lived here for a while before I did," he says, smiling slightly as he thinks about it. "That was the first time I saw the ocean. Is that lame?"

"No," Kurt says with a soft laugh. "I hadn't either at that point. So… Where did you live before you came to California?"

"Ohio," he replies. "A state which, if you can help it, you should never go to."

"Ohio? Seriously?" he asks, his voice sounding amused and surprised enough that Blaine wonders for a second if he's missing something.

"Yeah, why?" he asks.

"I'm from Ohio, too," Kurt says with a chuckle.

"Huh," Blaine says, nodding slowly to himself. He wonders for a second if maybe their proximity had anything to do with their connection; it's a stretch and he knows it, but it still feels like maybe just maybe it means something. "Small world."

"But hey, neither of us is in that hellhole anymore," he says lightly.

"True," he replies with a small smile, sighing and closing his eyes for a moment. "I think… I think I might remember maybe… Your first night in New York, or something."

"Oh. That… That must not have been fun," he says.

"It was… Weird," he says. He remembers how alone and scared he felt, how tiny he felt as he saw flashes of a dark and empty unfamiliar room. Only hindsight and thinking about the timing of it makes it make sense now.

Kurt doesn't say anything for a moment, struggling with what he is about to say. "Blaine, I… It didn't make any sense then, but I always felt like there was someone there with me. Just a feeling. I felt it more strongly at times like that… when I was feeling lost, or sad… It helped. Did you ever feel that way?"

"You tell me," Blaine says back simply.

"Right," Kurt says, letting out a soft sigh. "Your… Your freshman year of high school, that wasn't a good time for you, was it?"

"Not at all," Blaine says. "That was… Well, that was when I came out. And… everything after."

"Ah," he says in understanding. There is a moment of silence where they both recognize that there is a more to the story, something below the surface that feels like it shouldn't be talked about just yet. "But hey, it got better."

Blaine smiles softly at that, chuckling. "Yeah, I guess it did indeed," he says. "And hey. You helped me through that."

"I'm glad," he says, and Blaine loves how he's starting to figure out from the way his voice sounds when he's smiling.

"There's a lot of things I remember, now that I'm thinking about it," he says softly. "They're all… Probably pretty personal."

"Yeah… Knowing what I experienced from your life, I can only imagine what you remember from mine," Kurt says, his voice laced with a somewhat nervous laugh.

"Like when you were a kid…" he trails off, having a feeling he can just about guess what the deep, profound sadness that had occurred then was about.

"Ah. Yeah," he says softly, his voice sounding a bit sad and delicate for a moment and Blaine wants nothing more to wrap Kurt up in a hug and take back what he just said that clearly reopened an old wound. "My mom."

"Your mom," he echoes softly, nodding slightly to himself.

"It's… It was hard. But it was good, she was… She wasn't doing too good for a while before, so…"

"That doesn't make it hurt any less," Blaine says quietly. He knows that it's an old hurt and he knows that anything he says Kurt has probably heard before, especially since it was so long ago and Kurt has clearly long ago managed to cope with the loss, but he still feels like he needs to say something anyways.

"That's true," Kurt says softly, sighing. "I never felt as alone as I did then."

"But you weren't," he says back.

There's a moment of silence between them that feels heavy with meaning but neither one of them is willing to touch. Eventually Blaine speaks again, chuckling softly as something occurs to him. "Hey. Go stand in front of a mirror," he says.

"What?" Kurt asks with a soft laugh.

"You heard me. Go stand in front of a mirror," he says again. "I have no idea what you look like, besides your hands. And don't get me wrong, you have perfectly nice hands, but…"

Kurt does get to his feet, setting down the sketchbook and taking a few steps out of his living room before he stops again. "I can't."

"Why not?" he asks.

"This is ridiculous. I'm scared," Kurt replies with a soft, anxious chuckle.

"What could you be nervous about?"

"Shut up, you're scared, too. I'm really not much to look at," he says.

"I doubt that," Blaine says with a smile. "I bet you're perfectly handsome. You've got yourself a husband, he clearly must find you attractive."

"I guess…" he says slowly, but he still doesn't make any further moves.

"Want me to do it first?" he asks with a small smile.

"Would you?" Kurt asks.

"Sure," Blaine replies as he gets to his feet, walking back inside and going to his bathroom where there's a large mirror. He stops for a bit as he reaches the mirror, closing his eyes for a moment as he stands in front of it. He suddenly understands how nervous Kurt was; what if he wasn't what Kurt was expecting? And he basically just rolled out of bed and got up this morning, his hair is probably a mess, not to mention the fact that he's still in his pajamas…

"So? Are you going to show me?" Kurt asks after a moment, sounding hopeful in a way that gives Blaine a bit of confidence.

He lets out a long breath and moves his hands over his hair in a halfhearted attempt to somewhat control it before he opens his eyes, deciding that he has nothing to lose at this point. He opens them and takes in the sight of himself, noting his wild hair and how he looks kind of tired and all he can do is hope that he's being more critical of himself than Kurt is.

Kurt doesn't say anything for a bit, and Blaine starts to get a bit nervous.

"You're very handsome," he finally says, and Blaine lets out a soft breath.

"Handsome, huh?" he says with a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously.

"No," Kurt says, taking it back for a moment before saying, "I mean… yeah. You've got such a nice face."

"Thank you," Blaine says softly. "I do my best, I guess."

Kurt doesn't say anything until Blaine turns around to stop facing the mirror. "Hey!"

"It's your turn," Blaine said. "Come on."

"Okay… Okay, fine," Kurt says. He covers his eyes with his hands as he goes to stand in front of the mirror, taking in a few deep breaths as he mentally prepares himself to turn around.

Eventually he lets his hands drop, and Blaine takes in a sharp breath at the sight of him. Blaine isn't sure what he expected. He knows that Kurt has beautiful hands and a beautiful voice and it really shouldn't be a surprise that the rest of him is beautiful, too, but… He can't find words for a moment, glad that he isn't facing the mirror then so Kurt can't see his face which probably looks ridiculous right now.

"I told you. You're definitely something to look at. You should be a model," he says eventually.

"Oh, shut up," Kurt says, shaking his head. "You don't need to flatter me."

"I'm not flattering, I mean it," he says, chuckling as he looks at him.

"Hey. Turn back around," Kurt requests softly, and he does.

And just like that it's almost like they're standing face to face, looking at each other a bit shyly. There are smiles on both of their faces, looking at each other and kind of chuckling to themselves with a mixture of nerves and happiness.

"Hi."

Kurt laughs and smiles at him wider. "Hi."

"It's nice to actually finally meet you face to face."